Adventures in System Administration

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You may have noticed that Microsoft OneNote displays a little warning for notebooks stored in your Documents folder.

OneNote notebook warning “may not sync correctly.”

This is because Windows computers that are part of UVM’s Active Directory domain use a feature called Offline Files to make your Documents folder available to you when you’re not on the campus network. (see my Offline Files post for more info.)

The warning shows up because OneNote has its own file sync process, and having another file sync process layer under that can mess up its syncing, theoretically. In my many years of using OneNote, I’ve only seen one (maybe two) situations where this may have created problems. That said, ignoring warnings is generally a bad idea; it makes it easier to miss an issue that really does need attention.

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My previous post describes the normal operation of Offline Files. And most of the time, “it just works.” But there are times when it won’t, and getting it running again can be challenging.

Two Important concepts

First, it’s important to understandÂ thatÂ the Offline Files facility is providing a virtual view of the network folder to which Documents has been redirected when WindowsÂ detects that the network folder is unavailable. This means that, when Offline Files is really borked, users can see different things in their Documents folder depending one whether their computers are online or offline.

Second, Windows treatsÂ different names for the same actual server as if they are different servers altogether. Specifically, Windows will only provide the Offline Files virtual view for the path to the target network folder. You can see the target folder path in the Properties of the Documents folder.

If the second path is the one that is shown in theÂ Location tab in the properties of theÂ Documents folder, then you will be able to access that path while offline, but not the first path.

Show me the logs

There are event logs that can be examined. I’ll mention them, but I’ve rarely found them helpful in solving a persistent problem.Â If you want to get the client up and running again ASAP, skip ahead to the Fix it section.

There are some logging options available that can help in diagnosing problems with offline files. There are two logs that are normally visible in the Windows Event Viewer, under the Applications and Services logs heading:

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The following information is not new. We are in the process of making changes to our Folder Redirection policy, though, and I thought it might be helpful to have this baseline information in a place that is handy for referral.

Background

Offline Files is a feature of Windows that was introduced in parallel with Folder Redirection in Windows 2000. Folder Redirection allows an administrator to relocate some of the user profile data folders to a network folder, which has the advantage of protecting that data from loss due to workstation issues like drive failure, malware infection, or theft. It also means you can access your data from multiple workstations.

The Offline Files facility provides a local cache of the redirected folder(s) so that mobile users can continue to work with the data in those folders when disconnected from the organizationâ€™s network. When the computer is connected to the network again, any changes to either the network folder or the local Offline Files cache are synchronized. Users are prompted to resolve any conflicting changes, e.g., the same file was modified in both places, or was deleted from one and modified in the other at http://followersguru.net/.

At UVM, we use Folder Redirection on the Documents folder (formerly My Documents in XP), as well as the Pictures, Video, and Music folders. Most of the time, the Offline Files facility works without issue. However, as with all technology, Offline Files can fail. There are circumstances that can result in the corruption of the database that Offline Files uses to track the sync status of files. Doing major reorganizing and renaming of files and folders, for example, seems to be a culprit. Another one is filling your quota; you can continue to save files to your local cache, but the files wonâ€™t get synced to the server because youâ€™re out of space at http://followersguru.net/buy-instagram-likes/ .

How to sync your offline files

To manually synchronize your Offline Files with the target network folder, open the Sync Center by:

Going to the Start Screen (or menu) and typing sync center

Clicking the Sync Center item in the search results

Windows 8.1 Start search for â€œsync centerâ€

Windows 7 Start search for â€œsync centerâ€

or

Find the Sync Center tray icon and double-click it, or

Right-click and select the Open Sync Center menu item

Menu for the Sync Center icon in the Windows system tray.

The Sync Center Window should appear.

Offline Files status in Sync Center

Note that the Offline Files item shows the time of the most recent sync operation. If you want to initiate a sync operation, click Offline Files and then click Sync.

A sync operation has completed.

If there are errors or conflicts that require intervention to resolve, those will be show in the result. A conflict result is shown below.

Sync operation with a conflict.

Click the N Conflicts link or View sync conflicts on the left to see details about the files in conflict.

Right-click or select and click â€˜Resolveâ€™.

Select each file conflict you want to resolve, and click Resolve or right-click the file and select View options to resolveâ€¦

Windows provides information about the files in conflict and provides several appropriate options.

In this scenario, a file has been deleted in one location, and modified while offline in the other. Since only the one file exists, there are only two options: delete the file, or copy it to both locations.

Another scenario involves a file have been modified both offline and online, probably while using multiple computers. In that case, the resolution Window offers three choices: pick the offline file (on this computer), pick the online version (on the network folder), or keep both by renaming one of them.

Sync Errors are handled differently, and may require the help of your IT support staff or the UVM Tech Team.

A sync operation with error.

To review the errors or conflicts, you can view the Sync Results.

Sync result, with detail for an error.

You can view details about an individual error by hovering over it with the mouse cursor. In the example above, my folder â€œ2. Archiveâ€ is throwing an â€œAccess is deniedâ€ error. To resolve an error like this, it may be necessary to contact the Tech Team. In some cases, itâ€™s necessary to reset the Offline Files tracking database and essentially start over. This procedure is documented in a separate post, Troubleshooting Offline Files.

Changes in Outlook 2013

The most significant change in the new version of Outlook is the support of touch-based interfaces. In Outlook 2010, using your finger to scroll a message resulted in selecting a swath of text,Â as though clicking and dragging with a mouse. Outlook 2013 addresses this, and adds specific support for touch interaction with adjusted menu spacing and a thumb-based button bar that works really well on Windows tablets.

Outlook 2013 – special features available on touch devices include touch scrolling, and a button bar for the right thumb.

You’ll also notice a much cleaner design, where the faux 3D buttons and look have been simplified and flattened. I find myself selecting theÂ dark gray color scheme to restore some visual variety and separation, though.

One change that’s a little irritating is that you can no longer specify the folder into which copies of your sent messages are received; they go into a folder calledÂ Sent Items. Instead, I’ve configured Pine, Webmail, and Thunderbird to useÂ Sent Items, too.

I continue to find Outlook a user-friendly, feature-rich email client, and I’m glad to share these instructions with you. Let’s get started. Continue reading →

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Amid the praise for and complaints about the newer version of webmail, we received a plea from a netbook user. She pointed out that the new layout made it very difficult to navigate among her mail folders. I use a netbook myself, and I thought I’d share some things that we can do to improve our browsing from a netbook. Specifically, weâ€™re going to take webmail from this:

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Iâ€™ve received several phishing attempts, recently, this time masquerading as mail from Twitter. I thought Iâ€™d share how I recognized this as an attack. Many list members already know this stuff, but I thought Iâ€™d share since we still see folks responding to these kinds of attacks.

1. Unexpected

Before I even looked at the content of the message, I was suspicious because I donâ€™t have any twitter stuff associated with my UVM email. I could have deleted the message then and, if I was using twitter, logged into my twitter account directly to see if something was going on.

But I wondered how the message was crafted, so I opened it with awareness.

2. False link

A false link is shows a web address in the message, but the link that is attached to it is different. Below, my mail program shows that the link will actually send me to pachitanglangbarcelona.com.

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Recently, I was asked to talk with our Help Line staff about strategies for troubleshooting problems with Microsoft Office. I spent some time addressing the activation issues relating specifically Office 2010, which I wrote up in a separate post.

The most important point I want to make about general Office troubleshooting is that reinstalling office will rarely fix a problem. Office will kick-off a repair operation automatically if it detects problems with core Office files. Application, heal thyself.

More importantly, a repair operation or uninstall/reinstall process will refresh Office program components, but it wonâ€™t touch templates, user and system specific registry information, and add-ins that are the most frequent cause of problems.

Safe mode

The first step in troubleshooting should be to start the application in safe mode. Most versions of Office applications support a safe mode, which doesnâ€™t load templates, registry info, and add-ins. This step quickly determines whether the problem lies with Office itself or elsewhere.

Invoking Office safe mode is as easy as adding the command-line parameter /safe. Usually, I open the Run window (WindowsKey+R), and type the name of the office executable and add the /safe parameter. If you donâ€™t know the executable name, you can find it with the browse button, and then add the parameter at the end:

If the app doesnâ€™t start, then you probably do need to perform a Repair installation. If the application starts successfully (sometimes without opening a document in safe mode), then you know that the core office files are fine, and a reinstall isnâ€™t likely to help.

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Microsoft Office volume license editions have used the Volume License 2.0 mechanism to manage activation since Office 2010. Microsoft Office will activate against our campus Key Management Service (KMS), without user intervention, in a manner similar to the way current versions of Windows activate.

Occasionally, the activation process doesnâ€™t work. Problems are usually related to network communication with the KMS. Below are some steps to identify and resolve problems that might occur during activation.

Gather Information.

Gathering data is essential to fixing problems. If you ask me (or other IT staff) for help with Office activation, the first thing I will ask from you is the output of the commands in the steps below.There are a few steps that will make it easy to collect all the output of your troubleshooting steps.

Open an elevated Command Prompt (Run As Administrator)

Run cscript /h:cscript, which changes the default script host to cscript, so that output will go to the command prompt instead of a pop-up dialog box.

Change the Properties of the command prompt window to increase the Screen Buffer
height to, say, 3000 lines. This will prevent you losing earlier steps as the lines scroll off the screen.

When you are ready to copy the text from the command prompt, right-click the title bar of the window, select Edit > Select All, and then Control-C to Copy the text to the clipboard. Then you can paste the text to any place you want; an email message, a footprint entry, or a text file in notepad. (No need for images pasted into Word documents; please no!)

Enter the code above and attempt to reactivate. If it works, you should be all set. If it doesn’t, the following steps will help identify the issue.

Gathering Information.

Gathering data is essential to fixing problems. If you ask me (or other IT staff) for help with Windows activation, the first thing I will ask from you is the output of the commands below.

I recommend opening a text editor and copying all the commands and output into a file, which you can send to us if you need additional help resolving the activation issue.

NOTE: All these steps require running commands from a console window (cmd.exe), which you may need to run As Administrator. These commands work in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1.

1. Run ipconfig /all to capture current IP configuration information.

This could tell us whether the system is in a netreg-ed subnet and needs to register at http://netreg.uvm.edu, or if there are other basic network configuration problems. We really just need the Ethernet adapter, assuming that’s what is being used to connect the system to the network. We don’t need all the additional tunneling adapters, etc. If someone is using a wireless adapter, possibly with the VPN client, then info about those adapters also should be captured.

Please note: Microsoft Outlook is not among the recommended email clients supported by ETS. However, I use it regularly to access my UVM email (along with Pine and Thunderbird), and I offer the following instructions to help folks who really want to use Outlook 2007 here at UVM. â€”Geoff

We’re going to walk through the steps required to configure Outlook 2007 as an email client of the University’s central mail services. Microsoft has improved the IMAP support in Outlook with this latest version, and the configuration is more straight-forward.

Please note that you can click on any screenshot to get a larger (i.e., legible) version. Now let’s dig in.

When we first start Outlook 2007, the Account Configuration wizard will start. “Yes” is selected by default (we do want to configure our email account, don’t we?), so we’ll click next.